


But My Eyes Will See Only You

by vashiane



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Alcohol, M/M, Pining, Slow Dancing, This is just 2K of Barba yearning uselessly I'm so sorry, Vague Implications of past Barba/Benson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:28:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25391638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vashiane/pseuds/vashiane
Summary: Barba is predispositioned to giving Sonny everything he wants, except for himself. (And even then, he's failing fast.)
Relationships: Rafael Barba/Dominick "Sonny" Carisi Jr.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 43





	But My Eyes Will See Only You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theprophetlemonade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theprophetlemonade/gifts).



> We're not going to talk about how embarrassingly long this took me to finish but we _are_ going to talk about how I keep watching s17 Barisi just to feel something and we are _absolutely_ going to talk about how Lucy dragged me kicking and screaming into hell again. This is your fault. I love you.

“Dance with me,” Carisi says.

Barba lowers his third glass of chilled bourbon from his lips, the sigh that leaves him tinged with exasperation. He’s asked this once some time ago, and he’d been maybe foolishly under the impression that he wouldn’t be asked again. Sometimes, however, Barba forgets himself, and even more so does he forget Sonny, otherwise the man wouldn’t surprise him nearly as much as he does.

“I believe I’ve already given you the answer to that,” he says finally, thumb circling the rim. “I don’t dance.”

“I know you’ve given me the answer to that,” is Carisi’s response. “I just don’t believe you.”

A quiet scoff leaves Barba, and the glass comes up to his mouth again ‘til it’s empty, trying to drown the nervous flutter forming in his chest. It may be nothing, it may just simply be the liquor emboldening him — or, maybe Sonny knows he’s lying. He does dance, actually, but to him dancing’s an intimate, vulnerable art, and Barba has things he wants to hide.

Especially from Sonny?  _ Especially _ from Sonny.

For he’s already done a horrible job of keeping himself contained around Olivia, first in regards to her, and then in regards to Sonny. She smiles coyly if she passes the two of them, and just the other day she’d made a remark over her reading glasses — “Carisi’s going to be swinging by your office later with more details about the case. I’d ask if you mind, but, I’m sure you don’t.” All he could do was scoff good-naturedly and leave, but God, did it haunt him. Was he so obvious? Or was it just Olivia? 

He hopes it’s just Olivia, because the more anyone hazards a guess that his motives for keeping Sonny close are personal not professional, the more they’ll encourage it. Or hell, even  _ reveal _ it and — no. Rafael Barba is a man who reveals himself when he wants to be revealed, and only then. 

(If only God were so kind to not attempt to strip him bare whenever His hands were free.)

In the midst of all of this, Sonny’s gone quiet, staring blankly into a diluted glass of scotch, and Barba pulls himself from his own reflections to regard his. “What’s keeping you?” he asks, and Sonny’s head snaps up like he’s been startled.

“Hm? Keeping me?” His eyes dart around the office, a little frown to his lips as gears turn to conjure an answer. Meanwhile, Barba watches intently, for Sonny’s always a picture of motion and he’s an observer behind a velvet rope, singled-minded and focused and maybe a little enraptured. “Uh. Nothing, really, just… this case…” 

“Mm. The artist, yes?” Carisi nods, blowing out a heavy sigh through his nose. Barba can watch the weight of it all descend upon his shoulders, in the way he slumps, in the way his lips curl into a frown.

“Cindy Barlette, yeah... We keep getting stonewalled — by her peers, by her family, by her so-called friends… I just don’t understand.” True to his nature, he rises just as swiftly as he crumbles, an arm propped against his knee as he lets his hands carry his words. “How does someone have so many fans… so many admirers, so much support, and then when something bad happens to them and they need that support… it all just, it all goes away. Just like that. How can anyone think they’re a good person and act like their best friend’s trauma is a— is an annoyance? They’re acting like it inconveniences them.”

Barba’s tongue is laden with lead, eyes still locked on every flick and every curl of Sonny’s long, piano-perfect fingers, dreaming wantonly of their delicate touch against his skin. It’s Sonny who frees him from his spiral, concern painted over the questioning call of his name. “Barba?” he asks, and panic slips along his spine, cold as ice.

“Ah,” Barba manages once his mind floats down from the clouds, clearing his throat with a mortified pull to his collar. “You know what they say. Fame brings fair weather, and with it, fair-weather friends.”

Sonny’s eyes crinkle around the edges, an affectionate lilt to the smirk on his lips. “No one says that,” he says, words spoken around a chuckle, and Barba’s heart stutters in his chest in a way he can’t blame on the coffee he’s not drinking.

“ _ I  _ say that. It just hasn’t taken off yet,” he quips in return, taking his glass up and forgetting it’s empty. Maybe it should stay empty, for the last thing he wants is for his fickle tongue to rule him, locked between the juxtaposition of tangled silence and loosened confessions. The pendulum that sways him is tipped in favor of the latter and while Barba wants to turn Sonny in many things, a church is not one of them, not yet, not now. 

(If he can restrain himself, not ever, but the phrase  _ not ever _ wilts him like a starving flower.)

Sonny scoffs, abruptly, throwing his head back to finish his watered-down scotch. It’s empty in four neat swallows, and each one sets him alight in a way it shouldn’t, a firework bursting over, and over, and over, and — he is a helpless man,  _ God _ is he a hopeless man. “I don’t want to talk about work, for once,” he says, setting the glass carelessly against the armrest and parting his hands like he means to divide the sea. “I don’t want to think about the world for once. I just want to… exist.”

Barba feels as exposed and unexplored as the ocean floor, fingers tapping against his glass in thoughtless abandon. His  _ mind _ is in thoughtless abandon, and before common sense can rise to ground him, the words tumble from his lips.

“Dance with me,” Barba says. Carisi’s head snaps up and his self-control spirals down into somewhere unreachable, unable to be grasped by the desperate, flailing hands of his dying rationality.

“Huh?” There’s a word for the way Sonny tips his head that Barba would rather die than voice aloud, even to himself. “D-Dance with you?” 

“Dance with me,” Barba says again, already rising from his chair. The confusion melts away slowly, surprise stepping into the place where bafflement leaves. He stands with a nervous fragility, hands wavering uncertainly in Barba’s direction. 

_ “Okay _ …” Sonny says, his voice dipped and still dripping with hesitation. His head lowers, just a touch, a hand twisting and fingers curling in a beckoning gesture.  _ Come here _ ?, he asks wordlessly, and Barba’s returning  _ yes _ is immediate, the seconds that separate them agonizingly long. 

The minuscule part of him that isn’t enraptured with Sonny’s invitation quivers, a bottle of pop ready to burst. Contain yourself, he begs himself, contain me, he begs his God. His weak attempts at disguising his wants are to be cruelly, unabashedly tested, and he only has himself to blame if he falters. He feels his resolve slipping even now, as he steps into Sonny’s space, and Sonny’s fingers wind between the narrow gaps in his own, eyes falling upon the petal pink of his lips. 

The room is silent, but as Sonny’s other hand dips to his back, turning the distance between them into a nonexistent thing, an opera sings in Barba’s veins.

Their dance is simple, the waltz of two men on too many glasses of liquor, slow and stumbling and cautious. Occasionally, one of them stutters — Sonny when his feet are eager, Barba when his are reluctant, but the stutters are rare, marked by a gentle gasp and an apology, and Barba’s murmured reassurances. No words are shared, but none need to be; as if he trusts his traitorous tongue to begin with.

Sonny breaks it first, whiskey-laden breath hot against his ear. "I knew you were lying," he says lowly, fondly. Barba inhales sharply through his nose, trying in vain to hold a sense of composure — and in vain it is, as Barba's tongue is loose in his mouth and already words he swore he would say spill from him, like water from a broken fountain.

"Must you know all of my secrets?" he says, implying that he has more to find; he's dancing with a detective, it's his job to uncover what lies covered, and Barba already knows he'll fall apart under scrutiny, as he is now, as he always does. 

"Not all of them, Rafael. Only most." Sonny's hand slips against his back, a silently devastating blow to couple the one Barba’s already been dealt. He thinks little of his name most of the time — a name is a title, an address, and the sparks felt from any intimacy come from  _ how _ his name is spoken, not the name itself. But here, in a room where he is almost exclusively Barba, only Rafael under Olivia’s sharp, worried tongue, with the barest hint of playfulness coating Sonny’s voice, he melts. His head tips up, better to lock eyes with his beautiful tormentor. 

“Hm. You, calling me Rafael like this...” he murmurs, and that’s when he knows. He’s let the spell seep into too deeply, for now his gaze drops to his lips and the bourbon in his stomach bursts into flames, and he wants for nothing,  _ nothing _ more than to grab the man by the tie and keep him. He steps back, clearing his throat and drinking in the way Carisi’s brow furrows, creased with confusion and disappointment, and the spell is far from broken, but its pull becomes a touch more bearable to resist. 

(But only a touch.)

“Regardless,” Barba says, his lips quirking into a smile. “...Thank you.” He wants to make a quip about how he’s a distraction from his paperwork, how it’s late, anything to goad him away and give him the chance to breathe, but the words don’t come. Instead, he watches the other’s smile bloom, his gaze raking over Barba in a way that makes him feel exceedingly, achingly vulnerable. That ache persists, even as Sonny looks away to search the room for his coat, even as the same nimble fingers that had been flush against his back reach for it. “If you’re going, I’ll walk you out.” It’s a desperate suggestion, and he realizes this, but it keeps that warm smile on Sonny’s face, and in the moment that is all he wants.

In the next he knows he’ll want more, then him, then everything. 

“We should, ah... “ Sonny gestures between the two of them, his coat slung over his shoulder with a haphazardness that puts Barba on edge enough to claim it, just to keep it from falling. “We should do this again. You and me. Just… bonding.” He trips over the word “bonding”, as if he swapped his words at the last minute, and that’s yet another thing to agonize over later, when Barba’s alone in his office again with nothing more than his sea of thoughts. 

“Just bonding,” Barba repeats, and the understatement of it all is a tidal wave in his chest, the sweeping, consuming pull of a receding swell.  _ Just _ bonding is vague enough to tease him with his desires, vague enough to remain in that barrier of safety and professional that he should be in. It guarantees nothing and promises everything, and in that uncertainty lies a spark of  _ something _ that he’s desperate to ignite. “Just bonding is good. We should make a habit of this.”

  
(And that spark does ignite, in too long a touch just outside the elevator, in a grin that makes Barba’s heart flutter, in the low, welcoming cadence of a departing “ _ Rafael _ ”; he returns to his office in a daze, staring the undeniable fact in the face. Somewhere between his third glass of bourbon and the fourth he’s pouring now, he fell in love.)


End file.
